Guide to Successfully Navigating Today’s Media World

• 
  When developing your message, make it about people and their stories, not numbers or dollars. Speaker Pelosi presented an image of a sick kid needing her help, while President Bush was talking about the budget and the policy. Emotional beats factual every time.
  
• 
  Your message has to be simple. They had a bumper sticker, we had a 3-page fact sheet. If you’re explaining, you’re losing.
  

“The capacity for long-term memory of pictures seems almost unlimited.”

On February 24, 2010 tragedy struck SeaWorld in Orlando, Fla. when a killer whale snatched experienced trainer Dawn Brancheau from a tankside platform, pulled her underwater and drowned her in front of a horrified post-show audience.

SeaWorld rates high marks for its initial response to the crisis. On the day of the incident, Chuck Tompkins, head of all animal training for SeaWorld, faced the media. He talked first and foremost about Brancheau as a person and expressed appropriate sadness over her loss. He refuted media accounts from SeaWorld customers that the whale, named Tilikum, had appeared to be agitated earlier in the day. He detailed the many precautions SeaWorld and its trainers take in dealing with killer whales and announced that all procedures would be reviewed to ensure the safest possible environment for their trainers.

Two days after the tragedy, Jim Atchison, president and CEO of SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment held a news conference to announce an investigation would be launched and that outside experts would be consulted. He said the killer whale shows would resume the next day, but without trainers going into the water, pending the findings of the outside review. In an unfortunate choice of words, Atchison added, “our dining programs will resume early next week.”

He read a nice statement from Brancheau’s family, but his tone was a bit odd as he rejected the notion that Tilikum would be separated from the other whales. “No animal is ever subject to punishment of any form. Tilikum is no exception.” Atchison later added, “Tilikum is an important part of our overall team.” It seemed as though his main purpose in addressing the media was to defend Tilikum and get the word out that the shows were resuming. This was just two days after the third human death involving Tilikum at three different parks over 19 years.

And as Atchison repeatedly referred to Tilikum as a “killer whale,” I couldn’t help but wonder if the animal’s official designation, “orca” wouldn’t have been a better choice given the circumstances.

On CNN, anchor Ali Velshi said Atchison came across as, “sterile, detached and at times defensive.”

As the president and chief executive officer, Atchison should have looked the part of the steady leader, reassuring his team and customers that safety was his top priority. After all, a valued employee of 17 years had died on the job in front of his customers. What executives wear plays a part in how seriously their words are taken. Atchison chose a lightweight jacket over an open collar shirt instead of a blazer or, given the gravity of the situation, the preferred coat and tie.

But most troubling of all was the backdrop SeaWorld chose for the press conference. Atchison stood at a podium in front of a glass-walled pool. As he talked about the investigation into Dawn’s death, five whales frolicked behind him in the tank. Not only was the movement of the whales distracting from his words, their playfulness completely undermined the serious nature of Atchison’s remarks. The choice of that backdrop image firmly – and unwisely – positioned SeaWorld in promotional mode when it should have been in somber-but-reassuring leadership mode.

While I put limited credence into comments posted semi-anonymously online, a number of comments posted under the CBS News YouTube video of the press conference reflected SeaWorld’s poor choice of the backdrop.

“How trashy,” wrote “FreedomForOrcas,” an anti-SeaWorld group. “Doing the press conference in front of whales. Like ‘omg look at us we have whales.’ Stop pimping them out whenever you can Sea World.”

A YouTube comment from LarzWarz123 was even tougher: “He's like that stupid mayor of Amity in the Jaws movie, who never wants to admit the danger, never want's (sic) to shut the park down... bottom line... GREEDY, Stupid S.O.B!”

The online comment-posters weren’t the only ones who noticed. Writing in the Orlando Sentinel, veteran television critic Hal Boedeker asked a series of questions: “Did that stunning image send a reassuring message? Or did the whales upstage Atchison? Or was the staging an insensitive misstep, a reminder of what happened to the trainer?”

I am solidly in the camp of “insensitive misstep.” The images of the whales established an odd, promotional tone and sent the wrong message for Atchison’s remarks.

Research tells us people remember the images long after they have forgotten the words. John Medina, author of the New York Times bestseller, “Brain Rules,” writes, “We are incredible at remembering pictures. Hear a piece of information, and three days later you'll remember 10% of it. Add a picture and you'll remember 65%.”

It’s no coincidence we hear so many people say, “I never forget a face.” Educator Pat Wolfe, who specializes in the application of brain research to the classroom, examined the relationship between images and words in her book, “Brain Matters.”

“The capacity for long-term memory of pictures seems almost unlimited,” she wrote. In fact Dr. Wolfe, cites a powerful research study to make the case that a picture is actually worth 10,000 words.

This explains the most time-honored practice in public relations and politics: The photo op. The American Social History Project tracks the beginning of staged White House photos to the 1930s, “when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s press secretary instructed photographers to avoid showing the polio-afflicted President in a wheelchair.”

The photo op became an art form during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Deputy Chief of Staff Michael Deaver, described by Time magazine as the “vicar of visuals,” carefully positioned Reagan in the public eye, placing a special emphasis on compelling images.

According to the Washington Post, Deaver “positioned the former actor in visually irresistible locations where troublesome reporters' questions could not intrude: atop the Great Wall of China, on the beach at Normandy for the 40th anniversary of D-Day or in front of a construction site as the president announced the latest government report on housing starts.” The Post credited Deaver with, “transforming American politics with his powerful gift for image-making.”

Every president since Reagan has assigned production staffers to work as part of the White House communications staff on the staging of presidential events and even the look of the president’s television interviews. In 1992 President Clinton made Steve Rabinowitz the first full-time White House production chief. “The Rabbi,” as he was known, was succeeded in 1993 by Josh King, who laid out his philosophy on “Polioptics,” the political communications radio show he hosts each week on SiriusXM’s POTUS Channel.

“People’s attention spans are too short and network airtime too brief to allow for the full exposition of the President’s remarks,” King said. “But if you can come up with the two or three or four words that tell a story in one frame – whether it’s a still picture for a newspaper or that brief piece of video that’s muted while I’m running on the treadmill, you’ve won.”

Until King took over, Presidents were mostly seen in static settings – at best framed in front of an impressive landmark and at worst, stuck behind a podium or desk. They could move about the public on the campaign trail, but once in office it appeared their wings were clipped.

King made the case to show the young, vigorous President Clinton in motion. One memorable South Lawn event – the signing of legislation establishing Americorps – signaled a new day in Presidential image making.

“The plan started out as rather ordinary,” King wrote in “Polioptics,” a 10-part lecture he delivered on college campuses in 2009 and now available online. “Erect a tent on the South Lawn; invite a crowd; usher in the press; make a speech; sign the bill with a handful of pens emblazoned with the Presidential Seal and call it a day.

“But tents are hard to work in. They muffle sound, kill light and restrict movement.  It’s damned tough to make a good picture in a tent. So, I thought, let’s tweak it a bit. A diagram was drawn.  Some persuasion was needed.  Eventually, when the president emerged from the Oval Office expecting a routine bill signing, we ushered him down South Drive, hidden from view.  He took his place behind a grove of trees among a gaggle of red-jacket Americorps volunteers who would escort him up the South Lawn to the event site.  Positioned 50 yards away with a clear line of sight was a selected pool of photographers strategically positioned to capture “the walk up.” The band was cued.  The walk began.  The shutters whirred.

Here’s what made (that) image page one material in the New York Times and why it is still remembered: It was a cinematic moment.  George H.W. Bush rarely did events that featured physical movement.  They were static, often staged in front of that ubiquitous blue drape.  Instead, we looked at what Hollywood was doing — the framing of that iconic scene in Armageddon was borrowed from a similar moment in Tombstone, which was a takeoff of the beloved image of The Magnificent Seven.  Lenses love motion, whether on foot or horseback – the genuine smiles on the kids faces; the clapping hands extended; the legs captured in mid-stride — and we were feeding the lenses.”

When George W. Bush was elected in 2000, the new president tapped Scott Sforza as his head of production. A longtime ABC News producer, Sforza had also served a stint in the Bush 41 White House office of media affairs.

Sforza crafted a number of memorable message events for President Bush – none more moving or effective than on the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks when the president delivered a nighttime address from Ellis Island with the Statue of Liberty (with extra spotlights trained on it) as a stirring backdrop.

I had the privilege of working alongside Sforza at the White House in 2006-07. He is an incredibly talented and resourceful producer and a gem of a person. In October 2006 when we traveled to Scottsdale, Ariz. for the president to sign a homeland security bill, Sforza arranged for the signing table to be positioned outside our hotel, with Camelback Mountain in the background. I remember asking the advance team, “Is that really Camelback, or something Scott cooked up overnight?” He is that talented.

For Sforza, the goal was always to best represent the President – and the office of the President – however most appropriate for the message and tone of the event. While Scott will humbly tell you he learned from all those who came before him, he had a special knack for creating images that not only reinforced the message, but were moving and inspirational.

Sforza would also tell you the most iconic image of the Bush presidency was one that happened without any stagecraft at all – no stage, no microphone, no prepared remarks: the bullhorn moment at Ground Zero on Sept. 14, 2001. President Bush was touring the devastation with Governor George Pataki and Mayor Rudy Giuliani. He was greeting rescue workers who were digging through the rubble in search of survivors. As he wrote in his book, Decision Points, “The more time I spent with the workers, the more raw emotions rose to the surface.” Chief of Staff Andy Card asked the President if he would like to address the workers and he knew what he needed to do. Anticipating the moment, advance team member Nina Bishop had found a bullhorn. She handed it to the President, pointing the way to the top of the crushed fire truck where he joined firefighter Bob Beckwith for the memorable remarks. “I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” As always, White House photographer Eric Draper was ready to preserve the moment for history.

While not all presidential message events stand on the precipice of history, they all must be handled with care and attention to detail. On October 21, 2006 President Bush made a surprise trip to a nearby CVS pharmacy in Washington to help raise awareness for the open enrollment period for senior citizens to sign up for the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit. These unannounced stops are known in the White House Advance/Secret Service parlance as “OTRs,” as in off-the-record.

Typically for an OTR, the Secret Service would go ahead of the president by 45 minutes or so and make sure everything looked okay. As long as the word didn’t leak out in advance (it almost never did), the agents gave the green light and we headed out. On road trips, these OTR stops are often used to provide color and to show the President interacting with local people. When you see the President stopping at a lemonade stand or visiting the popular local hole-in-the-wall barbecue joint or ice cream parlor, chances are it’s an OTR.

For our CVS visit, the question was, where would we position the President in the store for his informal remarks to the White House press pool? Next time you’re in a drug store, take a look around and notice all the things you couldn’t possibly put the President in front of without creating a field day for the late night comedy shows.

Even though the President wasn’t supposed to go behind the counter (controlled substances back there!), he broke the rules and stood alongside the pharmacists to create an image that reinforced his message. He wisely referenced the helpful guidance the pharmacy staff provided seniors in his off the cuff remarks.

While politicians and campaigns tend to be better at using images to drive their messages than their corporate counterparts, there have been plenty of image fumbles in the world of politics.

Hurricane Katrina provided one such problem for President Bush. In Decision Points, he wrote that when the photo was released of him looking out the window of Air Force One at the devastation below, “I realized I had made a serious mistake. The photo of me hovering over the damage suggested I was detached from the suffering on the ground. That wasn’t how I felt. But once the public impression was formed, I couldn’t change it.” Not landing in New Orleans that day was the right decision, since his participation would have taken police and fire personnel away from the work of rescue and recovery. But landing in Baton Rouge at the command center would have been the right call both in terms of substance and style. That detached image from above – which not even 13 subsequent visits to New Orleans could erase – would have been replaced by shots of the president getting briefed by officials and encouraging the exhausted command center staff.

The “mission accomplished” banner aboard the USS Lincoln for the president’s announcement about the end of major combat operations in Iraq is a complicated case. The banner referred to the crew of the Lincoln completing its almost yearlong deployment – double its usual term. It was designed for the families on shore welcoming their loved ones home. Understandably, that nuance was lost on the media, even though nowhere in his remarks did the president utter the words, “mission accomplished.” Instead of reinforcing the president’s message, the banner inadvertently undermined it, and caused a lengthy controversy in the process.

There was nothing nuanced about the mishap at Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s 2008 Thanksgiving turkey pardon event at a farm in Anchorage. While doing a local television interview, a farm worker slaughtered a turkey in the background of the shot. He looked over towards the camera a couple times, smiling, as if to say, “I’m pretty sure this is a bad idea, but hey, it’s almost Thanksgiving and I’ve got to get these turkeys butchered.” It was another YouTube sensation and irresistible comedy candy for the late night shows.

Gov. Palin’s turkey tragedy notwithstanding, the corporate crowd would do well to study the political communications playbook,

In April 2009 a couple of workers in a Domino’s Pizza store in Conover, N.C. uploaded a YouTube video in which one of the perpetrators stuck mozzarella cheese up his nose, then claimed he put it on a sandwich that was headed out for delivery to a customer.

The video turned out to be a hoax, but Domino’s corporate response was lacking in several areas. They were slow to respond and when they did, the language they used unnecessarily acknowledged serious damage to their brand and reinforced a host of negatives. But the staging of their response was what bothered me the most.

Patrick Doyle, President of Domino’s USA at the time, recorded a YouTube video of his own. That was the right idea, but the optics were all wrong. First of all, he was not looking into the camera as he read his statement. If you must read from a TelePrompTer, have it positioned right below the camera lens. If the best you can do are cue cards, have someone hold them right above or below the lens.

Secondly, he was wearing a blue denim work shirt with a Domino’s logo on the chest. He looked more like a shift manager than the executive who was going to restore confidence in the company. He stood in front of a gigantic Domino’s logo. It’s a fine backdrop, but just because that’s where you do all your on-camera messages, doesn’t mean you have to shoot it there when crisis strikes. Put a jacket on and set up in a generic conference room or office. Don’t remind people that Domino’s was the pizza place that had the knucklehead employees on YouTube. Let people figure it out – maybe they’ll even think the problem was at Pizza Hut.

To communicate most effectively, the pictures must reinforce and even elevate the words. That takes preparation and knowing your goals…it takes the discipline to know your audience and the simple images that will resonate with them…and, of course, it takes storytelling. There is no better way to make the story memorable than by putting it in a compelling setting where the boss is out from behind the podium engaging with the audience.

And even if you do all those things right, there may be other things out of your control that can wreck your meticulously planned moment. Maybe a little kid makes faces behind your speaker. Or one of your on-stage participants dozes off on camera. Or the mother of them all, which happened to President Bush in May 2007 during a Rose Garden press conference: A bird poops on your sleeve.

• 
  Remember the setting and backdrop of your event are every bit as important as the words. Ask yourself, does this sign or this backdrop reinforce and support our message?
  
• 
  Make sure the person delivering the message dresses the part and looks like a leader. Even if your workplace normally has a casual dress code, in a crisis setting – unless the boss is out in the field – he or she should dress up a notch.
  
• 
  Start by considering the feelings of your audience. Ask yourself, how will they receive and interpret this setting, these signs and images? Are we striking the right tone?
  
• 
  Images are powerful because they help people remember your message.